


Familiar Stranger

by JazzRaft



Category: Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Campfires, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 22:28:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18352982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Sucked into yet another god's fight, Lightning fights across a new world alongside a pantheon of fellow warriors. One such warrior is Noctis, a prince claimed by a prophecy to carry out the will of the gods. He tells her a little of his story.Fewer things have sharpened Light's sword faster.





	Familiar Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> Originally filled for an anonymous request on [tumblr.](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/183947251977/hey-anon-who-asked-about-dissidia-fics-here)

Noctis liked camping.

Lightning didn’t completely hate camping.

On that, they got along just fine. They agreed on where the softest spot along the riverbank would be to rest, that, “Sure, fish would be great for dinner, have at it, Highness,” and that the Goddess could stay awake, fretting in her faraway tower, while the two of them slept soundly under the starlight. Lightning certainly wasn’t going to lose sleep over a god’s impatience.

“Not a whole lot bothers you, huh?” Noctis asked, turning the trout he’d caught around the fire spit.

“Lots of things bother me.” Lightning swiped stone over steel, honing her blade with a smooth river-rock for the next day of fighting ahead. She glanced skyward to where the Goddess was no doubt eavesdropping. “I’m just not in the habit of letting my enemies know what they are.”

“You mean Materia? Thought she was one of the good guys.”

Lightning looked at him, letting one, long hiss of god-killing steel tell him just how much faith she had in Materia’s pretty promises. Noctis bit his lip and ducked his head, poking his fish and pretending he didn’t say anything.

“Speak your mind, Highness. Isn’t that what you political types do best?”

“First of all, friends call me _Noct_ – we’ve been over this,” he sighed. “Second, I’m not the ‘political type,’ trust me. Not even close.”

Lightning smiled. That’s what she liked to hear.

They got along over a lot of things; from swords to steaks, from airborne acrobatics to preferring cats to the company of people, they had a fair few things in common – in spite of just how different they really were. Noctis was a prince, born into a life of privilege, prestige, and everlasting adoration. Lightning had been a l’Cie, abhorred by all for a role she didn’t ask to play; a nameless nobody, fighting to choose her own fate by carving through one domineering authority figure to the next.

She didn’t think she was going to like Noctis when she met him. Not one bit. She was two for three on dragging men from thrones that thought they could tell her what to do. Fortunately, Noctis hadn’t given her any reason to make him the third. In fact, the longer they traveled together, the less he reminded her of a prince, and more of another scared kid she knew, determined to act tough in an impossible situation.

She never could leave a lost puppy on the side of the road.

“We make a good team,” Noctis had said earlier, with a breathless smile, hands on his knees after a tough fight.

Lightning found she was hard pressed to disagree with him. Noctis liked warping into a fight head first, crystallizing sword after sword between strikes – there one moment, then gone in a blink of blue the next. Lightning liked diving into battle, head literally over heels, streaking between her opponents in a crimson blitz of sparks and steel. They both agreed on decimation over moderation, on acting first and thinking later when it came to the matter of combat.

The matter of divine intervention, however, was a wholly different story – though a far too familiar one for Lightning’s taste.

“Anyway,” Noctis mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck, sore from stooping over the spit for too long – or nervous she wouldn’t like what he had to say. “Things must be a lot different in your world. In mine, when an Astral says jump, you leap.”

Lightning drove her makeshift whetstone down the breadth of her blade. “Astrals, huh?”

“Yeah…”

Noctis lifted his skewers of fish from the fire, coming around to offer her one. Lightning gave her sword one more hard swipe – Noctis flinched – lifted the edge to inspect her work, then set it aside, satisfied with the sharpness. Sharp enough to kill a god, just the way she liked it.

“Tell me about these ‘Astrals’ of yours,” she said, plucking a skewer from his hand. The fish was hot off the spit and a little bit burnt, but she didn’t mind – she was used to it from her own cooking.

Noctis seemed happy with the results, devouring the trout as quickly as the steaming temperature would let him without burning his tongue. And he really did _devour_ it, ripping huge chunks from the meat with his teeth, not at all like the picture of dignified frailty Lightning had come to expect of upper-class folk.

“Let’s see,” Noctis started, between mouthfuls. “I don’t remember exactly how the story goes, but basically, the Astrals were made to be guardians of Eos – that’s my world. They’re these big, elemental gods that control the earth and the ocean and the sky – you get it. Right now, they’re slumbering around the world, waiting to be awakened by the Oracle to forge covenants with the King of Lucis.”

He tentatively raised his hand, indicating himself as said king. Lightning chewed on her fish, staring at the campfire as he talked. He paused, twirling his skewer between his fingers. “What’s the purpose of forging a covenant?” she prompted him.

“Um… Well, there’s this plague, I guess you would call it. The Starscourge. And there’s this prophecy for defeating it involving” – he scratched the back of his neck – “I don’t know. It’s kind of vague, and there’s a lot to it. The Astrals are supposed to help, I think.”

“And the price?”

Noctis blinked, looking at her, uncomprehendingly. The clueless, fearful twinge in his eyes made her chest feel tight. Lightning pursed her lips and stared ahead, into the fire, at all the memories cycling past like a phantom film reel within. Black brands of bondage to the demands of a divine machine, damned to a destiny of imprisonment – fail your Focus, live trapped as a shambling monster; prevail, and sleep for eternity in crystal. Paralyzed, voiceless, forbidden from the embrace of family, friends, and lovers; ripped from the passage of time to live on as a corpse, either way. All in the service of the fal’Cie, passing prophecies to their pitiful human pawns, dragging them from their lives to fulfill their own selfish purposes.

No matter where she ended up, it seemed the story was still the same. Another day, another cryptic prophecy to fulfill. Another brave new world, governed by beings, mistaken as divine, exploiting the blind devotion of mankind.

“There’s always a price.”

Gods didn’t think of people as people, only as pawns. They thought only in absolutes, not possibilities; only of doom and death, not love and life. They drew one line from start to end, then they plucked a person from their life to drop along that line. Like sending a lab rat running through a tube. Don’t deviate from the preordained path, do not question the fal’Cie’s judgment, _fulfill your Focus._

Noct’s voice was small when he next spoke. “Isn’t it worth the price to save the world?”

Lightning got to her feet, tossing the clean stick of her skewer into the fire for kindling. Sparks popped and flared from the wood, twisting up into the night.

“This prophecy you’re talking about… I’m assuming one of these Astrals gave it to you?”

Noctis shook his head, but didn’t say yes or no. His hair shaded a concerned crease in his brow, eyes on the fire, looking for answers within. He didn’t know. _Purposely kept in the dark, huh?_ _Whatever for?_ Lightning thought, bitterly. A lone savior, prophesized by God to save the world from apocalypse. No how or why, no guarantees, no face put to the words. Just a great shadow, safe in a realm beyond the chaos, while his puppet fulfilled his will.

Well, weren’t they just two peas in a pod?

“Listen to me.” Lightning knelt back down, facing Noctis and forcing him to look her in the eye. “I don’t know what these Astrals expect of you. And it sounds like you’re not quite sure yourself. If it’s up to you to save the world, then save it. Some things in life, you just have to do.”

When it came to her sister, to her friends, to all those souls left in the remnants of her world, there was no question. If it was up to her to save them, she would damn well do it. The gods wouldn’t save them. Mankind could only save itself.

It wasn’t a question of can or can’t. _No room for doubt._

Doubt haunted Noctis. She could see it so clearly in his face, in the way he couldn’t seem to hold her gaze, couldn’t seem to keep his hands from fidgeting, or sit without stooping to make himself look smaller. Maybe the gods wouldn’t see him that way. She didn’t know his story, but she knew him. She was him, once. A very, _very_ long time ago, forced to grow into a responsibility she’d never been prepared for.

“Whatever you have to do, do it. Just… Don’t do it because you think there’s no other choice. _Nothing_ is impossible. If your gods are anything like mine, they’ll convince you that their way is the only way to make things right. But what’s right to them, isn’t what’s right for you.”

In the short time she’d known Noctis, she knew that he was strong, but she also knew that he was scared. She knew that he was desperate to get back home, that there were people there worried about him, that he was burdened with so many expectations that he was terrified he wouldn’t be able to fulfill. He didn’t say these things out loud, but Lightning could hear him. She heard him in the echoes of her own past.

Hesitantly, Lightning reached out to touch his shoulder. She had her own duty to return to when this was all over, her own family to rescue. She couldn’t save Noct’s world for him or fight his gods for his fate. But she couldn’t sit back and watch him accept this God-given prophecy of his as gospel.

“There is _always_ another way. Take it from someone who’s saved a world or two already.” That made him smile. For some reason, that mattered to Lightning. “When you go back home, don’t trust in an absolute. Question it. Don’t accept one answer, search for all of them. And… don’t do it alone.” A hard feeling rose in her throat. She swallowed it down. “Trust your friends, Noct. You’ll need them.”

He chuckled, low and warm. “Finally called me Noct. That mean we’re friends, too?”

Lightning snorted, rising back to her feet to face the fire. It was still burning bright in the dark, a soft orange barrier of light spreading out to encircle the camp like a shield. They still had a long way to go before either of them were home. A long way still, after that, to fulfilling both of their duties to the gods. After it was all done, who was to say they would even remember each other in the end?

“Thanks,” Noctis murmured, his voice a shy hum beneath the crackle of the flames. “It’s… nice not being alone in this.”

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t think about the journey that awaited her back home. God’s solitary savior, collecting lost souls before the end of the world. She was the only one who could do it. Noctis stood up to feed his empty skewer to the fire. She felt the nervous shift of his eyes, darting between herself and the fire.

“I, um… Not that it matters much, coming from me, but I hope you win in the end. And that you don’t have to do it alone, either. You’ve got friends too, Lightning.”

“Light.”

Noctis was watching her, curiously. The fire cracked mutely, one last cackle of the embers before it started to die down. She watched it fade, the flames ebbing as the night continued to cool around them. Light passed into night, dark would pass onto light.

“Friends call me Light.”

Noctis’s smile brightened his whole face, lighting the shadows of doubt that haunted his eyes. She turned her back to him, mumbling that she’d take the first watch. It wouldn’t matter in the end, she told herself.

What was the smile of a foreign prince to the likes of her? What were his gods? What was his life? They were strangers passing through a stranger world, comrades by circumstance alone. She’d never see him again after this. What did it matter to her how he fulfilled his destiny?

Watching Noct curl against the grass to sleep, eyes closed, jaw slack, features soft and trusting that he was safe with a friend looking out for him… It mattered. It mattered a great deal.

Lightning’s sword gleamed in the moonlight, catching the reflection off the river. It had a destiny of its own to fulfill, one god already marked for the end of its blade, one world promised liberation. And yet, here she was. In yet another world, under the orders of yet another god, tempting this same blade.

What was one more? She’d said it herself, after all.

Nothing was impossible.


End file.
